Negative Emotions

Types of Negative Emotions

• Anger,
• Anger likely serves a variety of adaptive functions
• It organizes and regulates psychological processes, such as self-defense and mastery
• It regulates social and interpersonal processes
• and it organizes processes to assist with goal-directed action
• Negative functions
• negative intra- and interpersonal consequences, including child
maltreatment and violence
• Health effects:
• coronary heart disease (Niaura et al., 2002)
• Cause
• Several theorists have proposed that anger results from physical or
psychological restraint
• or from interference with goal-directed activity (Darwin, 1872/1965; Izard,
1977; Lewis, 1993).
• According to behaviorism theories, angry emotions—like frustration, anger,
and rage— are caused by the omission of positive reinforcers or the
termination of positive reinforcers.
• According to cognitive theorists, anger is an unpleasant emotion that often
occurs in response to an appraisal of a blocked goal.
• Fear,
• Fear is a negatively valenced emotion elicited in response to an
impending threat that motivates a defensive reaction to protect the
organism
• Generally, fear responses subside relatively quickly upon termination
of the threatening stimulus to allow the body to achieve a
homeostatic state.
• Anxiety
• Anxiety is a state of unease about a distal, potentially negative outcome that is uncertain or
unpredictable (Lake & LaBar, 2011).
• Fear vs anxiety
• anxiety is longer lasting, is more future than present oriented
• often has a less specific elicitor or terminator (Lang, Davis, & Ohman, 2000),
• and functionally prepares the organism to confront a threat—albeit reluctantly—rather
• than withdrawing from it (McNaughton & Corr, 2004).
• Fear turning into anxiety
• Fear can become anxiety if active coping mechanisms fail and the fear remains unresolved (e.g., when a
specific source of threat in the environment is not identified).
• Nonetheless, fear is not a necessary antecedent to anxiety
• Anxious states are maintained by a host of cognitive processes, including rumination,
• abstraction, risk assessment, mental time travel, and mental projection/simulation
• Similarity: fear and anxiety: both emotions are elicited in the context of defensive motivation
• Jealousy,
• Jealousy may result when the jealous person perceives a threat of loss
of a valued (romantic) relationship to a real or imagined rival.
• The threat may be to the existence of the relationship or to its quality.
• Jealousy is the reaction to the threat that we might lose the affections
of someone important to us and that these affections be directed
toward someone else. Envy is more simply a desire to have what
someone else has, whether this be a possession or a personal
attribute or characteristic. So jealousy is based on the possibility of
losing an existing relationship and envy is based on the possibility of
possessing some thing that another person has. Generally, jealousy is
more powerful and more intense than envy.
• Jealousy is linked to feelings of suspiciousness, rejection, hostility,
anger, fear of loss, hurt and so on. Envy is linked to feelings of
inferiority, dissatisfaction, wishfulness, longing and selfcriticism.
• Sadness,
• Sadness is an emotion that concentrates attention on the self and is
an indication that the person (the self) needs help.
• Experientially, it is made up of downheartedness, discouragement,
loneliness and isolation.
• Typical causes are the commonplace circumstances of everyday life,
but especially those that usually involve loss.
• Adaptive functions
• a. It has been argued that the state of sadness may facilitate deliberation, aid in
the reevaluation of goals, and motivate individuals to change their life
circumstances in adaptive ways in the face of such stressful or negative life
events (Carver, 2004; Keller &
• Nesse, 2006; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). It seems to have the effect of slowing
down the
• system and prompts reflection.
b. Moreover, the visible manifestation of sadness, in particular crying, may elicit
• compassion and aid from others (Nettle, 2004; Vingerhoets & Cornelius, 2001).
• Guilt,
• Guilt also occurs in response to accepting responsibility for a failure of an SRG
(standards, rules and goals)
• Guilt vs shame
a. It is not as intense a negative emotion as shame, since guilt is the consequence of
focus
• on the person’s specific actions that result in the failure rather than on the totality
of
• the self.
b. While it is possible to be ashamed of a guilty action, it is not readily possible to be
guilty
• about being ashamed
• Behavioural consequence
• a. The action pattern of guilt is directed outward toward reparation rather than
inward toward withdrawal as seen in shame’s collapse of the body and
disruption of thought. In fact, the emotion of guilt always seems to have an
associated corrective action, something the individual can do to repair the
failure (Cole, Barrett, & ZahnWaxler, 1992).
• 4. Guilt turning into shame
a. Guilt can be experienced with different degrees of severity, which are tied to
the ease
• and availability of a corrective action. Should a corrective action not be possible,
either in thought, words, or deeds, it is possible that a guilt experience can
become one of shame.
Cycle of
negative
emotions
Cycle of
Anger